Already when Dolly was a toddling little mite and met her mother's
father in the church in Marylebone, it had struck her as odd that
while they themselves were so poor and ill-clad, her grandpapa
should be such a grand old gentleman of such a dignified aspect.
As she grew older and older, and began to understand a little more
the world she lived in, she wondered yet more profoundly how it
could happen, if her grandpapa was indeed the Very Reverend, the
Dean of Dunwich, that her mamma should be an outcast from her
father's church, and scarcely well seen in the best carriage
company. She had learnt that deans are rather grand people--almost
as much so as admirals; that they wear shovel-hats to distinguish
them from the common ruck of rectors; that they lived in fine
houses in a cathedral close; and that they drive in a victoria with
a coachman in livery. So much essential knowledge of the church of
Christ she had gained for herself by personal observation; for
facts like these were what interested Dolly. She couldn't
understand, then, why she and her mother should live precariously
in a very small attic; should never be visited by her mother's
brothers, one of whom she knew to be a Prebendary of Old Sarum,
while the other she saw gazetted as a Colonel of Artillery; and
should be totally ignored by her mother's sister, Ermyntrude, who
lolled in a landau down the sunny side of Bond Street.
At first, indeed, it only occurred to Dolly that her mother's
extreme and advanced opinions had induced a social breach between
herself and the orthodox members of her family. Even that Dolly
resented; why should mamma hold ideas of her own which shut her
daughter out from the worldly advantages enjoyed to the full by the
rest of her kindred? Dolly had no particular religious ideas; the
subject didn't interest her; and besides, she thought the New
Testament talked about rich and poor in much the same unpractical
nebulous way that mamma herself did--in fact, she regarded it with
some veiled contempt as a rather sentimental radical publication.
But, she considered, for all that, that it was probably true enough
as far as the facts and the theology went; and she couldn't
understand why a person like mamma should cut herself off
contumaciously from the rest of the world by presuming to
disbelieve a body of doctrine which so many rich and well-gaitered
bishops held worthy of credence. All stylish society accepted the
tenets of the Church of England. But in time it began to occur to
her that there might be some deeper and, as she herself would have
said, more disgraceful reason for her mother's alienation from so
respectable a family. For to Dolly, that was disgraceful which the
world held to be so. Things in themselves, apart from the world's
word, had for her no existence. Step by step, as she grew up to
blushing womanhood, it began to strike her with surprise that her
grandfather's name had been, like her own, Barton. "Did you marry
your cousin, mamma?" she asked Herminia one day quite suddenly.